ARTIFACT
by Rik Hunik
2200 words
Copyright 2016 by Rik Hunik
A slightly different version of this story appeared in “The Fifth Di...” Mar. 2015
Chapter 1
Sitting cross-legged in the basket, Darby watched the circle of blue sky overhead dwindle as the darkness pressed in against the feeble light of his battery-powered lantern. Dimly, about twelve feet away, a vertical rock wall surrounded him in a mathematically precise circle, so featureless he couldn’t tell that he was descending, so perfect that it had to be artificial, which suggested he had found the right place, that his years-long gamble was about to pay off. The Artifact was deemed to be nothing more than a legend, but operating on the hypothesis that it actually existed had brought him here.
The thin cable connecting him to the surface disappeared into the dark, making it seem that he hovered unsupported and motionless, but he was sure he was descending at the same steady rate because he trusted his servants, reinforcing that trust with promises of large rewards. They didn’t know why he was down here, they just knew that when he came back they would be very rich, and they believed that if he didn’t come back he would gain his vengeance from beyond the grave.
So many of his colleagues were bogged down in endless analysis of this or that aspect of whatever minor ancient artifact they had, and while it was true that some breakthroughs, such as the cable he hung from, had benefited many and made a select few very rich, the odds were so low he didn’t think he had a chance to win that lottery again.
Besides, his research had taught him that he didn’t need to understand the technology or know how it worked in order to use it, so he concentrated on tracking down the Artifact, a legendary tool that allowed the wielder to accomplish nearly anything he could imagine.
Long ago the Artifact, created to bring peace during a long period of turmoil, had grown too powerful and became corrupted by evil in the hands of a rebel wizard, who used it as an ultimate weapon, but before he could establish himself and consolidate his power he was defeated by a large coalition of wizards. The Artifact, too powerful to be destroyed, they cast into a bottomless pit which they created just for that purpose.
Darby didn’t care about good or evil, he just wanted the power, so he gathered every reference to the Artifact, sifted through the mountains of material, distilled it, and came up with several possible locations. Nobody else took the legends seriously, nobody thought the Artifact could be real, and everybody thought he was crazy to spend so much time and money searching for it. Sometimes he agreed with them, but he persisted, eliminating the possibilities one at a time until he found this hole.
Even though he owned a factory that produced the black fiber he had contracts to fulfill, so he could only take a fraction of a percent of the output for his personal use, and it had taken him several months to get together what he thought was enough. Then had come the nightmare of transporting the spools and a heavy-duty winch to the hole. He was certain his cable, thin at his end but growing thicker as it supported more weight, was strong enough, but as more minutes ticked by with no sign of a bottom he began to pray that his cable would be long enough.
He had only made two and three eighths miles of the cable, so when the two-mile call came down he broke into a nervous sweat despite the chill. He dropped another glowstone, watching it vanish into the depths, swallowed by the darkness like the others.
But no, this one was different. Far below, so dim he wasn’t certain at first that it was really there, he saw a tiny spark, like a dim star in the night sky. His eyes glued to it, struggling to control his impatience, he watched the spark slowly grow brighter as the winch kept lowering him at the same steady rate.
Excitement grew as the light below resolved into a cluster of glowstones, all the ones he had dropped, and he called on the intercom to his servants above to slow the descent. His lust for power had brought him here, but he tried not to get too excited because he was searching for a legend which might not exist, or may have been moved or destroyed, or might not work anymore, so even if this was the right place his success was far from certain.
The basket thumped down on dry sand and he stepped out, turning up his lantern to see the wonders around him, but all there was to see was a circle of smooth sand, undisturbed except for the glowstones and his few footprints.
He pushed back the despair that threatened to take him. This had to be the place, the artifact had to be here somewhere.